Falling in Love—NOT the Goal

My name is M. Rose Gardner and I am an aspiring author of contemporary romance.  This is my first article for A3 and I hope you enjoy it.

You may be looking at the title and wondering why the goal in a romance isn’t falling in love? Actually, the only person who should have that goal for the hero and heroine is the author.

Who, What, Why and Why Not is the title of the first chapter of GMC: Goal, Motivation and Conflict by Debra Dixon. The goal equals “what.” Your characters goals are what they want, or as Debra Dixon wrote on page 13: “Goals should be important enough for the character to act against his own best interest and to endure hardship if necessary”

That doesn’t sound like the journey to find the person you love to me. Besides, if the hero and heroine already have the person they love with all their heart in the beginning of the story, there wouldn’t be a story to tell.  Instead their “what” is something usually unrelated to love.

All good stories open with at least one of the main characters going about their lives in their ordinary world, focused on a career or experiencing a life situation that doesn’t leave room for the complications of a love relationship. They may believe they’re in love with someone else. Or perhaps they’ve been hurt in a past relationship and have closed their heart to the possibility of falling in love again.

Their initial goal is not about finding love.

Then something changes.

Change shakes up their always shakes up our world.  Like our characters, we like to believe we have things under control and aren’t happy to have change messing up our plans.

Just because most romance novels don’t start with either the hero or the heroine wanting to fall in love, that doesn’t mean those plots haven’t been used.  I watched The Wish List on the Hallmark Channel recently. The movie opened with the heroine expecting a proposal (her ordinary world) only to have the man break up with her (change). Determined to find her “perfect man” the heroine creates a list of all the qualities she wants in a perfect man and her journey to find him begins (goal). I’m not spoiling the movie by telling you how it ends.

A romance novel is about a powerful emotional journey. At a minimum the push and pull of the emotions complicates the ordinary world. The resistance may cause conflicts for the main characters. They may deny their attraction for a variety of reasons. While falling in love, or back in love, is unexpected, it leads the heroine and hero to the person they can love with their whole heart and to the promise of their happily-ever-after.

BIO

Rose Gardner’s writing journey has come in two phases. The first was focused on contemporary category romance. After a break, she returned to writing contemporary heartwarming stories about love, hope, healing and the power of forgiveness. During the first phase of her writing she was a finalist in thirteen contests and won her category in seven including a 2007 RWA Golden Heart finalist in the Long Contemporary Category, and 2nd runner up in the Harlequin Super Romance Conflict of Interest Contest in 2008. More recently she won 1^st place in the Blue Seal Award for General/ Contemporary/ Romance Novels at OHCWC 2017.